How Ikeda's on I-80 became a must-stop for people traveling to Tahoe

Growing up in Tahoe, my family would often stop at Ikeda’s either on the way down to the Bay Area or on our way home. I have a lot of memories of eating burgers in the patio out front, but the treats I remember most are those Ikeda’s fruit pies with crispy, buttery crusts and fruit oozing out the sides. Just trust me: a road trip to Tahoe is incomplete without one of those pies. 

Established in 1970, Ikeda’s began as a fruit stand. Sam and Sally Ikeda were orchard farmers in Auburn who wanted to sell their fruit directly to the customer. The store is named after the Japanese American family. (Ikeda is pronounced ee-keh-duh.) Today, the business is phasing into the hands of a third generation of Ikedas, with two stores in Auburn and Davis, a line of Ikeda’s homemade goods and ideas to keep growing. All the while, the business has stayed true to the original values instilled by Sam and Sally: quality food, cleanliness and customer service. 

Interstate 80 starts to incline up the Sierra Nevada through green rolling hills. I round the bend and the white dome of Auburn’s county seat appears. I pull off on the Foresthill exit, fill up a tank of gas (because gas is so much cheaper in Auburn than it is in Tahoe) and then head down a little two-lane country road that runs parallel to I-80. That’s when I see the sign in bright, bold red letters for Ikeda’s market and pie shop.

“Tasty burgers.”

“Fresh fruit.”

“Pies.”

Sam’s grandson, Derek, grew up spending his summer vacations working in the store. Derek told me he has early memories of folding pie boxes and doing odd jobs around the market. Now the 26-year-old is taking a leadership role in the family business. 

“You can ask anybody in our family,” Derek said. “It’s our blood, sweat and tears in this store.”

Both Sam and Sally were children during World War II when they were forced from their homes and incarcerated at a prison camp at Tule Lake. Their experiences at Tule Lake marked their beginnings, Derek said. 

“They were children and that’s all they knew,” he said. “If anything, it gave them motivation to go out and become successful. They were so hungry to prove that they were successful people. They weren’t going to let the Japanese internment camps get them down. They were just going to go out and create a successful business.”

When Sam and Sally were freed from Tule Lake, they were in high school and they went to work as farm laborers in the Central Valley. Eventually, they moved to Auburn and bought a tomato field from another farmer named Everett Gibson, who would become a mentor and business partner to the Ikedas. The fruit stand expanded quickly, thanks to Gibson’s clientele from the Bay Area and Sam’s green thumb. 

Eventually, Gibson retired, and Sam and Sally took the business on entirely as their own.

“[Sam] didn’t call it farm-to-fork back then, but he said, ‘Let’s start a fruit stand where we sell directly to the customers,’” Derek said. “They woke up in the morning, picked the peaches at 5 a.m., then came back at 9 a.m. and started selling them right at the store.”

Because they’re a small farm-to-table business, Derek told me they pick fruit when it’s “tree ripe.” 

“The farm is 1 mile away from our store in Auburn,” he said. “The interstate wasn’t built when they opened their first fruit stand. When the interstate came, it was like gasoline to a fire. We were already doing great. We already knew we had great products and people would come to us, but then putting the interstate here really just set our store on fire.”

At 5:30 p.m., the sun is hot and the parking lot is nearly full when I pull in and park next to a Tacoma loaded up with mountain bikes. I walk past a woman heading to her car, hands full with a white pie box. Families are sitting at tables just outside the market, sipping on milkshakes and eating burgers. I walk inside the market and hear “guest 27” called over the loudspeaker. 

The aisles are packed with people, many who look like they’re stocking up on goods before their Tahoe vacation. And there is plenty here. Small baskets full of ruby red cherries, large and fuzzy peaches and other freshly picked fruit. Ikeda’s salad dressings, smears and dips. Tomato salsa, mango salsa, peach salsa. A man in a tie-dye T-shirt joins me near the cheese section. On the back wall, rows of jams, canned goods and honey are displayed. 

I count six entire shelves devoted to hot sauce. 

Then, I turn around and see the pie display at the center of the store. It’s a table stacked to the brim full of those same white boxes I saw the woman carrying to her car. I have to wiggle past two other shoppers to get up close. There is razzleberry and tripleberry. Regular apple and Dutch apple. Pecan. I see strawberry rhubarb cobbler, but the strawberry rhubarb pies have already sold out.

The pies were the brainchild of Derek’s father and Sam’s oldest son, Glen. After Glen graduated college, he came home and started working at the family store. Sam’s business ethics meant that Ikeda’s sold their very best fruit to customers, Derek explained to me. Glen found a way to use all those number twos, the less-than-perfect fruit. He turned them into pies. 

“It all started with growing the fruit with my grandparents, establishing the name and quality and brand,” Derek says. “My dad took that and ran with it, started making homemade recipes, homemade salsas. He’s the cook in the family.”

Derek’s favorite is the Dutch apple, but says the marionberry is a close second top seller. The strawberry-rhubarb pie has also become a customer favorite in recent years. Most of the fruit is grown on the Ikeda’s farm, and the fruit they don’t grow, they source from other regional growers. 

Remembering the stretch of road ahead, I walk over to the restaurant side of the market where the menu serves everything from ahi poke and crab sandwiches to chicken pot pie and many different types of burgers, including a Beyond burger. That’s my order, with cheddar cheese and a pint of Revision IPA, brewed in Reno. After some debate, I decided on a slice of cherry pie. A girl in a ponytail and a baseball cap rings me up, and outside, I slid into a table recently emptied by a large family on their way up to Tahoe. 

The pandemic was up and down for Ikeda’s, Derek said. The restaurant shut down, but the grocery store stayed open and kept the business afloat. Then came the urban exodus to Tahoe, and Ikeda’s witnessed the mass movement of Californians to the mountains. 

“They would go down I-80, and luckily, we’re right here,” Derek said. “Definitely, from all that, we saw a huge increase in business.”

My order number was called soon enough, and I ate my burger quickly, fueling up to get back on the road. 

When I finally took a bite of my pie, whole cherries spilled out from beneath a thin layer of crust. The cherries burst and the crust caught the residual sweetness and syrup. 

Then I got back in my car, drove up a ramp and merged onto I-80 eastbound, continuing my drive up to the mountains.